Druidry, service, exploitation and entitlement

In theory, service is part of the Druid path. However, it is all too easy for things to go wrong around service, taking us either towards exploitative situations, or ones where people develop unreasonable feelings of entitlement. Which way a person goes I think often depends on how they were to start with. People with low self esteem and poor boundaries are easily exploited. People with unhealthily big egos easily develop entitlement issues.

Most places that need volunteers have more that needs doing than there are resources to get the things done. A willing volunteer is often at risk of being asked to do more, and more. If that volunteer can’t hold their boundaries, they can end up working themselves into the ground, burning out, becoming ill. It’s not an acceptable outcome. In some cases, the exploitation can be deliberate, and this tends to happen when there’s someone in the mix who wants power and feels entitled.

When volunteers have entitlement issues, they feel that the work they do (and often they don’t do much) entitles them to certain kinds of treatment. They should be given more power, power over others. They demand unearned respect, resources flow towards them that should not flow towards them. They become more important than the project. Volunteers with entitlement issues drive away or break the volunteers who came to give. They distort projects, sometimes they ruin them.

How do we avoid this happening? I think the key thing is to look at the contract between volunteers, or between volunteers and organisations. Most of the time, that contract is never explored or spoken of, but it exists nonetheless in people’s minds.

A good volunteer comes to the work first and foremost because they believe in it. They are sustained if they have the resources and support to do the work and the feedback to know they are effective and valued. Good volunteers probably want to feel part of something, and they need watching to make sure they aren’t over-burdened. They need respect, taking seriously, and acknowledgement.

An exploiter will withhold information and resources, refuse to praise and encourage, and always ask for more. People who came to give cannot keep giving in such environments. Where a culture of supporting volunteering in the way I’ve suggested above is in place, it’s more obvious when someone is there for a power trip.

The entitled volunteer spends more time talking about how great they are than they spend doing anything. They will use the cause as a platform to raise their own profile. They can be charismatic, confident and apparently very useful indeed which makes spotting them harder, but not impossible. It takes collective willingness not to give power to someone with entitlement issues. If the people around them will not massage their egos, they will eventually give up and move on, but this is not easily achieved. If you are running volunteers, it is worth dropping people with manifest entitlement issues because they will damage the rest of the volunteers to get ahead, and damage any culture you may have been trying to build.

Ask outright what people want from volunteering, and listen carefully to what they tell you.